A Movement of Thieves and Beggars

Luke 19:28-40

March 20, 2016. Palm Sunday

You realize, of course, that Holy Week begins with horse thieves? It’s pretty much the first liturgical act of the entire drama. “Go into the village ahead of us, and you’ll find a colt. Take it.”

Not, “go and ask the horse’s owner if we can borrow it for a bit”; not, “go the Joshua’s Rent-a-Colt and pick one up”; not “see if we can use the rabbi’s mule.” Just find a colt, take it, and if anybody asks, tell ‘em the master needs it.

The amazing thing is, it works. Someone – as it happens, the owner of the horse – does stop them.

“Hey! What are you doing with my horse?”

“The master needs it.”

“Sure, no problem. Tell him I said, ‘hey.’”

So, I suppose, technically the story begins with horse borrowing … with every intention of returning. Though, it must be said, the story omits that detail.

Still, this is not the way a traditional leader organizes a movement, nor is it the way that a legitimate leader administers an organization.

There’s a great deal of improvisation going on here. It’s not so much that Jesus is making this up as he goes along, although there’s certainly some of that. After all, nobody has done this whole messiah thing before so there’s not exactly a script to follow.

Improvisation, of course, is more than just “making stuff up.” Improvisation begins where one is, working with what one has been given, and moving always toward opening up new possibilities.

Jesus is in Jerusalem, in the seat of power – both secular and religious – at a moment fraught with uncertainty as an oppressed people yearn for liberation, for jubilee, for justice. While religious leaders seek to maintain an uneasy status quo that is, at least, more peaceful than all-out war, the secular leaders seek to maintain a repressive order that is profitable to Rome.

Jesus steps into this moment aiming to open up new possibilities of a better future. He works with what he has been given – a people, their stories, and their traditions.

The parade into Jerusalem, for example, is this marvelous piece of street theater with none-too-subtle implications for the powers that be. It works because it takes a familiar tradition – the triumphal entry into the city along the route used by military and political leaders – and turns it on its head: a colt, instead of a war horse; a rag-tag group of women and children and the poor leading the way where one would expect Roman legionnaires; Jesus, a humble outsider riding in the place where you would expect to see the governor or, perhaps, even the emperor.  

I always scoff at folks who say they want their church to remain out of politics, and I scoff, first and foremost, because of the gospel of St. Luke. Luke gives us many of the most beloved stories of Jesus, beginning with the birth narrative, and, from the very beginning – “in those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus …” – from the very beginning of the story Luke pays great and pointed attention to the political context of Jesus’ life.

In other words, there is something that we can accurately call “a politics of Jesus.”

But, as this parade into the seat of power subtly suggests, this is not politics as usual, and this is not your grandmother’s movement – unless, maybe your grandmother was Mother Jones or maybe Dorothy Day. Mother Jones, who said, “if I can’t dance I don’t want to be part of your revolution,” Dorothy Day who said, “don’t call me a saint; I don’t want to be dismissed that easily.” Those two women come far closer to Jesus’ way of engaging the powers that be than do most folks who pass themselves off as political leaders these days.

It’s easy to see why leaders these days don’t want to follow the way of Jesus. Look at the story this morning. As we’ve seen, it starts with thieves or, at best, with beggars. Jesus’ followers in Luke are not well-scrubbed and carefully vetted middle class suburbanites with made-for-TV lives.

Recall how the story begins: with a birth announcement delivered to shepherds – folks at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder. When Jesus grows up – in a backwater town distant from the cultural centers of the day, flyover country, if you will – and begins his movement, he seeks out fishermen, who have going for them only that they aren’t shepherds.

You want to go lower on the power chart in 1^st-century Palestine than shepherds and fishermen? Well, the only way to go lower would be to seek out and include women in your inner circle. Mary, Martha, Lydia. Check.

So you have a movement, if not literally of thieves and beggars, then, at best of the marginally employed and of women. Oh, and don’t forget the tax collectors.

So, what happens? Well, let’s look again at this parade into Jerusalem.

The people – “multitudes,” Luke tells us – come to town making an unholy racket, praising God loudly, and crying out, “blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord!”

My running friend and colleague, MaryAnn McKibben Dana, writing this month in Christian Century, notes “Jesus doesn’t lead the throng into Jerusalem, riding out front with everyone trailing behind him. […] But here, as his ministry approaches its culmination, it’s the disciples and the crowd who are out ahead, and he’s the one following. The Pharisees see it, too; for months they’ve been tut-tutting Jesus – what he does, how he does it, when he does, and with whom. Now it’s the crowd they want to stop at all costs.”[1]

Why? Why do the religious authorities want to stop a crowd that is praising God? Why are the civil authorities afraid?

I think the key lies in the crowd – in their identities. These people are not powerful, they are not privileged, they are the furthest thing from insiders. They are not inside-the-Beltway. The powerful would probably like to dismiss them as thieves and beggars, or, at best, the powerful might choose to provide some basic level of sustenance to them, enough to keep them quiet and out of the way where they pose no threat to the privilege enjoyed by those in positions of power.

To raise too many questions, especially in a rowdy and public manner, threatens the status quo. Those in power will happily brand those who question that power. “Tell those thieves and beggars to shut up!”

If dismissing the crowd doesn’t work, they’ll turn on the leaders. As Brazilian Archbishop Helder Camara famously observed, “When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

That is why the Pharisees tell Jesus to keep it down. “Tell your people to be quiet!”

But Jesus understands, as Dr. King so often observed, “that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” There is something in creation itself that cries out for justice. The rocks themselves will start to shout.

It is all well and good that we should begin worship this morning taking up a collection of coats. It would be gospel to end worship questioning the economic and political systems and structures that leave so many people out in the cold. Palm Sunday is about more than a festive parade.

As MaryAnn put it, “Here are two disciples, sent into a town where they aren’t known, hoping they don’t get tarred as donkey thieves. Here are crowds, making themselves vulnerable, out ahead of Jesus where there’s nowhere to hide. Here is loud boisterous testimony of God’s deeds of power, so powerful that it makes the Pharisees desperate to silence it.”[2]

Palm Sunday is about more than a festive parade. It is about the long march toward the beloved community – that place where all God’s children are welcome, where we all hear the voices of those long silenced, where we know one another not in terms of power or wealth or status, but in terms of our common, shared, and equal status as beloved. Let us walk on, with shouts of praise, “hosanna,” in the highest! Blessed is the one who comes this way, and keeps on walking the path, in the name of the Lord. Amen.

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[1] MaryAnn McKibben Dana, “Reflections on the Lectionary,” in Christian Century, March 2, 2016.

[2] Ibid.